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BS 2425.8 .854 1924 


Two days before 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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https://archive.org/details/twodaysbeforesim00shep 





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TWO DAYS BEFORE 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
NEW YORK » BOSTON + CHICAGO - DALLAS 
ATLANTA + SAN FRANCISCO 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


SIMPLE THOUGHTS ABOUT 
OUR LORD ON THE CROSS 






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BY 
Pre Rey he Re Lo SHEPPARD 


- VICAR OF ST. MARTIN-IN-THE-FIELDS AND 
HON, CHAPLAIN TO H.M. THE KING 


Rew Bork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1924 


All rights reserved 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


First published, February, 17922 
Second Impression, October, 1924 


FOREWORD 


Turse addresses, which make no claim whatso- 
ever to originality, were written on board s.s. 
Berengaria during a particularly rough passage from 
America. ‘They are printed practically as they 
were spoken and are published at the request ot 
some who heard them. The pressure of work has 
made it impossible for the addresses to be either 
re-written or revised. 


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Pet oy a 





CHAP, 


III. 


CONTENTS 


FoREWORD , i ‘ ‘ ‘ ; 
A> PRAYER *.. a é a ‘ x 
THe Way oF THE Cross ‘ i r 


“FATHER, FORGIVE THEM, FOR THEY KNOW 
NOT WHAT THEY DO” , : , 


“ Verity, I say UNTO THEE, TO-DAY SHALT 
THOU BE WITH ME IN PaRADISE” 


“WoMAN, BEHOLD THY Son.” ‘BEHOLD 
THY MornHer” : ‘ ‘ ; 


“My Gop, My Gop, wuy Hast THou 


FORSAKEN ME?” , Sle ‘| 
“] THIRST”. I i - x ‘ 
“Tr Is FINISHED” , v . ; f 


“ FaTHER, INTO THY HANDs I COMMEND My 
SPIRIT <i ° ° ° ° ° e 


15 


27 


35 


O Heavenly Father, forasmuch as none can 
come to receive Thy Holy Word except Thou 
draw them by Thy gracious power, we beseech 
Thee to pour out Thy Holy Spirit upon us, that 
our hearts may be inclined favourably to receive, 
steadfastly to retain and obediently to perform, 
whatsoever we may learn from the Words on the 
Cross, so that we set forth in our lives what we 
owe to Thy redeeming love, Through Jesus Christ 
our Lord. | 


Vili 


CHAPTER I 


THe Way oF THE Cross 





CHAPTER I 
THE WAY OF THE CROSS 


Ir is with a truly wonderful restraint that the 
writers of the Gospel tell the story of our dear 
Lord’s Passion. 

They feel, I think, that it needs no embellish- 
ment to make it real and impressive. Perhaps they 
gloried in it too much to fill their tale with the 
expression of their own sorrow. ‘There are no 
“ahs” and “ohs” such as fill some of our 
devotional books that tell about the Passion; they 
give us just a plain, straight recital of all that 
their Master suffered on His way to the Resurrec- 
tion. In the Gospel story there are few adjectives, 
no compliments, no flattery. It is something of 
this strange restraint, awe and dignity that I would 
so like to recapture. We will not endanger one 
scene that is compelling and impressive by lashing 
ourselves into emotion. We will not sentimentalise 
the Cross. ‘Too often Good Friday has been for 
many of us but the recital of the physical sufferings 
of Jesus. It has been a yearly spectacle of some- 
thing that was very revolting. We who take part in 
the spectacle are very sorry about it: we smite our 
breasts as the men of old and vow that it was all 
very monstrous, and go back to the City, and there 
is an end. 


I can neither understand nor bear those easily 
II 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


thrown-off phrases about the Blood of Jesus; for 
instance the words of a hymn that is often Sir et 


“* So may the blood from out His side 
Fall gently on us drop by drop,” 


seem to me revolting and entirely meaningless. 

Neville Talbot says something that is well worth 
attention about this phraseology on the Blood of 
Jesus: ‘* Doubtless this imagery of the precious 
Blood of Christ is as a casket containing a treasure. 
But unless the casket be opened, the imagery 
interpreted, the treasure will lie hidden from many 
by that which is repulsive to them.” 

No word written or spoken can really help unless 
we understand what the Cross and the Words 
from it mean for us, our world and our home. I 
have known so many who by their own efforts 
have been born again on Good Friday. 

There is much darkness still around the Cross. 
It is hard for men to see it as it actually is, lit 
up now by the light of Easter Day. Jesus is nearer 
to us than ever before, but His Cross is farther 
away, but Jesus without His Cross is adorable indeed, 
but not powerful to save. 

Jesus is nearer than ever. We know Him in a 
sense in which He has never been known before. 
We know all about His humanity. Modern scholar- 
ship has brought Him across to us. Books about 
His human life pour out from the press, and they 
are not only bought but read. But the moment 
after Jesus comes alongside of us, He goes ahead 
to a Cross, and later to a Resurrection, and here 


it is hard to follow and many turn back. 
12 


THE WAY OF THE CROSS 


The Cross has been preached to us so as either 
to mystify or revolt; there was a preacher who 
said—or was it in a book that we read it ?—that 
God being angry caused His Son to die to satisfy 
His fury; and did we not once read somewhere 
that God is more favourably disposed towards us 
now because Jesus died in agony? Perhaps that 
wasn’t what was written or said, but it is how we 
read and understood it. Anyhow, when we weren’t 
revolted we were mystified. 

The Cross of Christ, when it is understood, is 
our glory, but it needs rescuing from the mist that 
is around it. ‘The Cross was never meant to be so 
mystified and intellectualised as to be unintelligible 
to simple folks. There is mystery, but there is 
enough light shed from the Cross for simple people 
to walk in and rejoice. 

Let me say one or two of the simplest things. 

First of all, the good news of the Cross is not 
merely about Jesus, it is about God. ‘The Cross 
is set up once and for all, so that we may see in 
terms of love just how God loves the world. He 
got His whole heart out on it. 

Then it was set up so that we might see the 
hell that sin causes. If you see the one who to you 
is most lovable in the whole world in agonies 
because of what you have done, your heart is broken 
with a sorrow that leads to a changed life. I have 
known a lad in prison unrepentant until he saw the 
suffering and agony that his sin caused his mother. 
It was crucified love that broke his heart, while 
the moral teaching of the prison chaplain had 
failed. At the Cross a million men have said, 

13 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


“ Father, forgive, until now I never knew what I 
was doing.” ‘The Cross is more like God than 
anything He ever did, and in seeing Jesus we see 
God. It is God’s appeal to the best in man. 
Jesus headed a movement of men up to God when 
He set forth the love that was glad to suffer for its 
own. 

But the Cross still stands and men know in 
their hearts that it alone can lift humanity. If 
any of us think we have anything to contribute to 
human welfare without a share of suffering we are 
just living in a fool’s paradise, which is no paradise 
at all. We learn that hard lesson at Calvary. 

I know one thing for certain—because of the 
Cross I can love God, and more than that, because 
of the Cross I can be a better man. 

If you can, will you make a prayer that the 
Risen Christ may show you why He chose the 
Cross, and why it behoves us, too, to suffer if the 
Kingdom of God is to come upon the earth, and 
why we may indeed glory in asking for a share | 
in His suffering? 


7 


CHAPTER II 


‘6 FATHER, FORGIVE THEM, FOR THEY KNOW NOT 
WHAT THEY DO.” 





CHAPTER IT 


Tue tragedy of the Crucifixion begins with as 
noble a prayer as was ever breathed. ‘The first word 
spoken from the Cross is the last word in wisdom 
for the days in which we live. Had we been passing 
near enough to Calvary to catch that prayer offered 
by a dying-man we should have been obliged to stop 
and hear more. 

We are perfectly capable of recognising what is 
Godlike. Here is a morality that has never been 
surpassed. 

Christianity has only one legitimate weapon, | 
though it uses many. It is to conquer the world by 
loving it and in no other way. ‘The moment its 
followers begin to take part in the conflict—beloved 
of Churches and Nations—as to who shall be the 
greatest they are on the way to the denial of Christ. 

Almighty is the word we most frequently attach 
to God, and by it we suggest to ourselves that God 
can do whatever He pleases whenever He chooses. 
Out of that came the passionate question still re- 
echoing, ‘‘ Why did not God stop the War?” ‘The 
power of God, if Jesus Christ is to be believed, is 
only of that kind which is able to do whatever 
love can do. Love in the end is unconquerable— | 
all-mighty. You can crucify it, but it will rise again, — 
On Calvary the whole heart of God is seen. He 

B 17 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


went on loving all the time, especially when it hurt 
badly. 

Were I in the presence of men and women who 
had never heard of Jesus Christ, I can imagine no 
greater appeal than to tell them that, when He 
Whom we call Lord and Master was nailed to a 
Cross, He began an agony of three hours by asking 
that those who had nailed Him there might be for- 
given—and more, by suggesting to God, Whom He 
called Father, that there was a reason for forgive- 
ness. ‘ Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
they do.” Men would listen after that. Moral 
values never wholly foresworn would suggest that 
this man should be given a hearing. 

You will sometimes see a crowd gather round a 
- speaker to hear his first word. If it appeals they will 
remain for more. We must all feel grateful that the 
first word we are allowed to repeat as we point the 
way to Christ crucified is as arresting as this, 
“¢ Father, forgive them, for they know not what they 
do.” Not in the lecture-room, or in the pulpit is 
forgiveness here preached, but by a man in agony, 
more cruelly wronged and as dreadfully hurt as any 
who was ever done to death in France or Belgium or 
the world over. There was a crown of thorns on 
His head, nails tearing His flesh, and a crowd of sight- 
seers making sport below. The kiss of Judas must 
have been smarting still, and, worst of all, there was 
the agony in His Mother’s upturned face. At this 
moment He preached forgiveness and found a reason 
why those who hated Him and hurt His Mother 
might be forgiven. 


In all honesty, I cannot see how nations ‘and 
18 


‘FATHER, FORGIVE THEM?’ 


peoples, professedly Christian, can continue their 
enmities in the face of this first word spoken by the 
Ideal to which they aspire and Whose teaching they 
profess to accept. I think it might be easily proved 
that in this, as in every respect, Christianity is also 
common-sense. 

The Dean of Durham has lately said that there are 
certain people we can never forgive. Conceivably 
that attitude is possible for those who are not pre- 
pared to accept the tenets of Christianity. From the 
lips of a man who daily prays “ Forgive us our 
trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against 
us” it is a truly dreadful utterance. It is desper- 
ately hard to forgive some people some things, but a 
Christian exists to attempt what the world considers 
impossible. Left to ourselves we should much 
prefer to give a general forgiveness all round, exempt- 
ing one or two who are really the ‘limit’ as if our 
dear Lord had prayed, “ Father, forgive everybody 
except Judas and the man who plaited the crown of 
thorns, and the man who drove in the nails.” It is 
indeed hard to forgive everyone who has trespassed 
against ours and us; it may take months of praying 
for a larger measure of love before we can place their 
names on our list of intercessions, but to determine 
that it can never, shall never, and ought never to 
be done, is as disastrous to the soul of a Christian 
as it is to the world in which he lives, 

Perhaps our acutest trouble lies in our refusal to 
realise how hard it is to be a Christian. We are 
always asking for crowns and chief seats in the King- 
dom without a thought of the crusade that comes 
first. Comfort and consolation, but no battlefield ; 

19 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


that is our demand on our religion. The light- 
hearted prayer for a front seat up above is so easily 
tossed up to the Throne of God, but there is a 
cup first to be drained, and it is often bitter drinking 
and seldom of our choosing. Christianity does not 
consist in abstaining from things that no gentle- 
man would think of doing, but in doing things that 
are unlikely to occur to anyone who is not in touch 
with the Spirit of Christ. 

The sin of separation is perhaps the most harmful 
of all the mean evils that stalk the world. Many of 
us keep it alive. We hug our hatreds to our breast, 
and nourish them while they prey on the hearts of 
men. ‘The situation is complicated because so often 
we think we have forgiven—we are proud of our 
magnanimity—yet we have not forgiven in Christ’s 
sense at all, all the while there is a mental reserva- 
tion that never again can we be friends ; it shall not 
be the same as it was. We have never discovered 
any excuse for forgiving our enemies, except that 
we are so generous. : 

There is no juggling to be done with our Lord’s 
words about forgiveness. It has got to be of that 
kind that would desire to share Paradise with a 
criminal—seventy times seven is the minimum that 
must be measured to him who has offended. ‘That 
is difficult ; how well I know it. There is one man 
whom I am struggling hard to forgive, but only in a 
formal way as yet have I forgiven. I know I cannot 
be truly a disciple until I have done better than this. 
Also I know that “‘ He who cannot forgive others 
breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself.” 


He that hateth his brother is in the darkness and 
20 


‘FATHER, FORGIVE THEM’ 


walketh in the darkness, and knoweth not whither 
he goeth because the darkness hath blinded his eyes. 
He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is 
Love. He that abideth in love abideth in God and 
God abideth in him. 

And there is a further consideration: I wonder 
sometimes whether we do not owe more than we 
realise to those who have hurt us. At least they 
_have warned us of the pain that hatred and cruelty 
can inflict. ‘he people whom the world accounts 
criminals have saved many another from crime, 
because they have heard or read the whole brutal 
tale of the hell that has been brought to those who 
love them. 

Only lately a man and a woman on the scaffold 
paid to the community the penalty of their crime— 
a poem was written about them : 


Then came a day :— 

Judged and condemned, enduring without hope,— 
I heard how, near at hand, two prisoners lay 

In separate cells, each waiting for the rope: 
Fearful of that whose touch would put away 

All griefs and fears. 

And helpless I, to aid 

Their hapless state,— 

Lighten, or lift from them that stroke of fate,— 
With heartfelt tears, 

For them, poor souls, I prayed, 

That them from utter wreck 

Some Help might save ! 


Then to my heart 
There came a rending wave: 
Across my neck 
A sudden rope was flung ; 
21 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


Up went a light, 

And I, of land, had sight,— 

Where, dark against the sky, two murderers clung, 
And in the baffling storm, hand over hand, - 
Hauled on the line 

Which drew my feet to land! 


Lord, in Thy Kingdom’s day, remember them, 
Whate’er they did, who helped me, in my need, 
To touch Thy raiment’s hem! 


Is it far-fetched to suggest that there are reasons 
for being grateful even to those who by their sin have 
held up before us the most vivid picture of the last 
act of hatred? } 

Well might this great question of Christian for- 
giveness engage the attention of the statesmen of 
the world. ‘The Treaty of Versailles has failed, as 
some said it would at the time, because there was 
no chair left vacant around the Conference table for 
the Peacemaker. The darkness of separation has 
fallen on many of the hopes of universal peace that 
clutched at the heart of humanity in November of 
1918. It is hard for men to-day not to live in the 
Saturday which came between Good Friday and 
Easter morning. Everywhere the nations growl like 
sullen dogs on fragile chains, there is little trust and 
no Christian forgiveness. Europe looks as if it needs 
must re-group itself for another universal massacre. - 
If we have lifted the cloud of our hatred from one 
nation, itis only toremoveit toanother. One would 
have thought that the so-called statesmen of the 
world would have come to realise by now that there 


can be no hope until each nation takes more than its 
22 


‘FATHER, FORGIVE THEM’ 


own self-interest to the Council Chamber, until, 
indeed, it is willing to forgive with that full forgive- 
ness that brings comradeship and the confidence and 
laughter that a friend shares with a friend. It is 
hard to see how the clouds can ever be dispelled 
until humanity stands bare-headed beneath the 
Cross of its Redeemer and hears Him cry, “ Father, 
forgive them for they know not what they do.” 

It is hard for us to make that prayer our own, , 
for the nails are still piercing hands that are human, 
and the sweat of agony is still moist on men’s brows ; 
suffering, loneliness and poverty do not make easily 
for forgiveness. It is not a prayer that is likely to 
be said with eyes looking across the Channel, the 
North Sea, or to where men and women live in 
indulgence and ostentation, while half the world is 
in want, unless it is preceded by a prayer for a larger 
measure of the love that was in Jesus Christ. It is 
harder still, maybe, to re-echo the first cry from the 
Cross while we. think of some of those who live 
close to our daily life who have hurt us, only we 
cannot bring any gift to the Cross, or to the Altar 
on Easter Day, unless we first be reconciled to our 
brother. 

“‘ Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
they do.” They did not really—they did not mean 
to crucify actually; they meant to hurt but not so 
successfully. In a sense, like the Roman soldiers, ) 
they were only doing what they were told to do. | 
The whisper went round that we were going to 
strike and they struck first. Perhaps, even, they 
thought they were doing God’s Will; it would not 
be the first time that man has hitched his own 

23 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


ambitions to the car of some kind of Jehovah, and 
imagined he was following God’s Will. 

Take the case of a friend and neighbour from 
whom we have long since parted company—after all 
it may be that the act that brought about the separa- 
tion has long since been regretted. Little we know 
the full story of the worry and provocation that lay 
behind it. It was done in a moment of heat and 
anger and at a time when nerves were strained beyond 
endurance. It was never meant to wound and cut 
down the years like this; also, it does take two to 
make a quarrel, and even our best friend would be 
obliged to admit that at times we are dreadfully 
difficult and irritating. If we and they could see in 

: one ghastly nightmare of reality the poison that 
(spreads from a wrong that is unforgotten and unfor- 
| given we should not think it weak and feeble to speak 
| from our side the first word of forgiveness. It were 
(better to accept an unfair share of the blame than to 
suffer the sin of separation to continue. 

It was a weak thing before our Lord’s day to © 
forgive an enemy, and foolishly weak to allow that 
there had ever been circumstances that could excuse 
his offence. ‘The world has not changed very much 
since His day, and the rate of its progress in peace- 
making compels us to believe that there is room for 
a little company who will try and take their Lord 
and Master seriously. God’s fools let us call them, 
if we wish. We shall go on bumping from one 
catastrophe to another until Christ’s Royal Way of 
loving men into penitence is attempted, and His 
way suggests that those who have been injured, 
cruelly and unjustly injured, should make the effort 

24 


‘FATHER, FORGIVE THEM’ 


to forget their own wounds—their own offended 
dignity—their own loss of status and prestige, and 
should pray for those who have hurt them as they 
hope Christ will pray for them, “ Father, forgive 
them, for they know not what they do.” 


25 


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CHAPTER III 


.: Lorp, REMEMBER ME WHEN THOU COMEST INTO 
Tuy Kincpom.” 


‘Verity, I say unTOo THEE, T'o-pAY SHALT THOU 
BE WITH ME In ParapiseE.” 


fe 


4 





CHAPTER III 


Here we touch mystery: here it is that many 
turn away from the Cross, for it is difficult for us 
to believe that this Second Word is more than a little 
kindly attention offered by one dying man to 
another. Had it been so, it would not have lived 
as it has in the hearts of men. The Christian dares 
to believe that this is the heart and power of God 
getting itself across in the only way that can win a 
free response. The kind of God that man demands 
is one Who would dare the agony of Hell to save His 
own, not because He pitied but because He cared. 
There is more than one Cross on Calvary, and it is 
the Cross on one side in the shadow that reflects the 
glory of the Son of God. 

The good news of the Gospel is more than the 
biography of a Lovely Man. It is the demonstra- 
tion of what God is like. Forget that and the day 
becomes bad and not Good Friday, and there remains 
little to be done but shed a tear or two for a dear 
departed hero who never made good. 

We love Him because He first loved us; other- 
wise, I do not think we could have loved. He 
came to us and now we want to come to Him. 
Ignorance of God, not sin alone, once kept us away. 
The reports of His character that came from prophet 
and priest were not satisfactory ; they did not answer 
to our heart’s yearning. ‘here was a darkness around 

29 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


God felt most keenly by those who were incurably 
religious. What is His character? ‘That is what 
really matters. ‘‘ Padre, what is God like? It is 
your job to know,” was only the War-time way of 
putting the age-long question. In answer we point, 
not to a single crucifix, but to one cross alongside of 
two others on which God has chosen to be nailed 
so that He might be actually alongside of them in 
the direst hour of their suffering, should He be 
needed. Love cannot go further than this. I know 
no truer picture of God than this, and none so 
compelling. 

There is an old story of a man who died and is 
supposed to have gone into the darkness of Hell. 
There came to the guardian of that dread place first 
his brother who asked if he might send him in a cup 
of water. ‘Then his friends and relations who begged 
for his release, and last of all, his mother, who the 
moment the gate was opened rushed in that she 
might be with him in Hell. If we can begin to 
understand that, we shall not look in vain at the. 
dying thief on Calvary. Man is not saved because 
he reaches up to the truth, but because the Way, the 
Life and the Truth reach down to him, so that 
he can recognise perfection. 

The story of that dying man is as the story of the 
world; in the main it has been the old, old tale of a 
great refusal. God had done His best from afar to - 
win the free love of men, but there had been a 
check. That offer was re-made more powerfully 
still by Jesus in the sunny days of His ministry, but 
in the main again He failed—thwarted by sin, yes, 
but also by a perfectly tragic conception of the 

30 


‘TO-DAY IN PARADISE’ 


character of God. Sin and darkness were in between 
God and His children, sometimes because they would 
not listen to the still small voice—sometimes because 
they preferred to stand outside the Kingdom than 
to be the servant of a King Who looked so much 
like a tyrant. To put this right not even the 
Ministry of Jesus was effective. We empty the 
Gospel of a great deal of its meaning if we discount 
the expressions of disappointment that burst so often 
from the lips of our Lord. Here, then, was a crisis. 

Once more there was a check and a failure. A 
few were ready for the Word of God, but only a 
few. Something more was necessary, that is, if love 
could do anything more. For the world, like the 
penitent thief, was on the Cross in agony, and there 
was darkness over the face of the earth and sorrow 
in the heart of God, and then happened the last 
and greatest device of love—God and His Son con- 
spired to come out of the darkness into the light. 
Our Lord got on the Cross alongside of men. If 
they suffered, so would He. All the fury of the 
world should burst over Him. Was man dying 
deserted? then He would, too. Surely if once men 
were to see what sin cost God, if once He could get 
His heart right out before them, they would turn 
homeward in sorrow and in gratitude. 

I would I could make this more real to you. I 
wish the penitent thief could tell you himself the 
whole story, and yet I think I can do as well, for 
there are doubtless many acts in my own life that 
have brought me into even greater condemna- 
tion. We, too, know how God in Jesus Christ does 
come straight into the heart of the most squalid 

31 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


scene ever enacted; not because He pities but 
because He will not let His own go, if by one supreme 
act of costly, holy, passionate Love, He may win a 
free response from one failure. ‘The story of that 
thief is the story of a million men and women who 
have cried in the hour of their despair, “‘ Lord, 
remember me.” And the answer of God is the 
same as the answer of Jesus, He gives more than man 
dares toask. ‘“‘ With Me”’—those are the words that 
matter. As for Paradise, well, it begins here and now. 

If there be any who feel the need of forgiveness 
of sin and the knowledge of the Love of God, I can 
only suggest that they should cry out of their dark- 
ness, “‘ Lord, remember me.” It will not be in vain. 
God, said St. Bernard, is never sought in vain, even 
when we do not find Him. 

If there has ever been given to any of us the 
promise that tells of pardon, and the Vision of God 
in the face of Jesus Christ, there is also given a 
commission to forgive by acts as nearly like the acts 
of Jesus as we can make them. We must bring 
God’s Absolution to others. 

Christ’s Life of Love within us is to make us 
His agents in reconciling God to man and man to 
God. ‘* Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted 
unto them; and whosoever sins ye retain, they are 
retained.”” We have always limited these words to 
those who are set apart for what is known as the 
priestly office of the confessional. It is the priest, say 
the faithful, who can alone remit and retain sin. 1am 
quite sure that is not true. Every single follower of 
our Lord has a share in the remission of sins by his 
attitude towards those who long for a fresh chance. 

32 


‘TO-DAY IN PARADISE’ 


Our Lord was the great Believer in men. It was 
His belief and trust in them that so often helped 
them to make good. He detested sin, but in loving 
sinners He gave them fresh courage and hope. He 
never quenched the smoking flax. He remitted sin 
by loving sinners. He never retained it by driving 
them to despair. 

“Be ye perfect, even as your Father in Heaven 
is perfect.” What a wonderful faith in man! 
Our Lord had no illusions about human nature, and 
yet He always sees men as the children of God. 
Man is made for Heaven and for God. He greeted 
him as a brother, and He loved not merely his soul 
but him. It was once said of the Headmaster of a 
well-known public school that if he would only stop 
caring for his pupils’ souls and care for them, he 
would help them more. 

Formal confession is, indeed, of great value to 
some people. I spend a good deal of time suggest- 
ing it to some men and dissuading certain women 
from the practice, and shall so continue until 
women are permitted to hear the confessions of 
their own sex. But it is not merely a formal and 
official pardon pronounced by a man wearing a 
stole that remits sin, and brings men and women 
back into the fellowship of Christianity; nor is it 
the refusal of that pardon that retains them in 
sin. ‘The act of the humblest and most illiterate 
Christian disciple can remit, and indeed, it can 
retain. Our attitude towards sinners either absolves 
or retains. We are so likely to retain the sin of 
someone else by our hard and sour face, our lack of 
understanding, and our distrust of people who, like 

Cc 33 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


ourselves, have made bad mistakes. Whenever we 
repel by our aloofness and loveless inhumanity, we 
harden, alienate, and refuse to exercise our God- 
given Fenccon of the remission of sins. We refuse 
to take part in the absolving Love of Christ. ‘That 
attitude is not uncommon amongst confident Church 
people. It was well expressed by an old lady who 
once said, “I don’t want the visitor from the 
Church coming round saving her soul on me.’ 

Every day we mix with folk who know nothing of 
the happiness that has come to us since we learned 
to believe in the Love of God. They are often 
good people, but it is strange how often for them 
life has lost its radiance. Whether they will ever see 
the Lord Christ depends on whether they can see a 
reflection of His Love in us. 

It is a fine and yet terrible thing to be stamped 
as we are by our own desire with the sign of the 
Cross. ‘To be within the circle of Christ’s disciples 
gives us infinite power to crucify more completely 
as Judas did, or to love as completely as Peter did - 
in the end. We can remit sins or retain them, 
alienate or repel, win or lose. 

If we know how to love as our God loved, believing 
always in the goodness of men, we shall set forth the 
most compelling picture that the world has ever 
seen, namely, the picture of Almighty God crucified 
that He might be alongside of crucified humanity. 
Who knows whether there may not come even 
through us to some poor soul out in the wilderness 
of despair and temptation, the Voice above every 
other voice that cried “‘ ‘To-day shalt thou be with 
Me in Paradise”’ ? 

34 


CHAPTER ‘IV 


“WHEN JESUS THEREFORE sAW His MoTHER AND THE 
DISCIPLE STANDING BY WHOM HE Loven, HE saITH UNTO 
His Motruer, ‘Woman, BEHOLD THY SON.’ ‘THEN SAITH 
HE To THE DISCIPLE, ‘ BenotD THY Mortuer.’ AND FROM 
THAT HOUR THAT DISCIPLE TOOK HER UNTO HIS OWN 
HOME.” 





CHAPTER IV 


In pictures and carvings of the Crucifixion our 
Lord is generally represented as attended by His 
Mother on one side of the Cross and St. John on 
the other. There were others there, but these two 
are chosen as the two whom Jesus loved best on 
earth and as the two who loved Him best. 

It is Mary I want you to think about. Short of 
superstitious reverence, there is no honour too great 
for Mary the Mother of Jesus. She is standing now 
by the Cross doing there what almost every woman 
would do while her beloved suffered. 

Women are much braver than men in the presence 
of pain.. We try to leave the sick-room, they beg 
to remain. Perhaps it is because they suffer so 
much more than we do. I wish men realised this 
more. Anyhow, here Mary is near her Son. Peter 
might slink away, but not Mary the Mother of 
Jesus. What does she care for the jeering multi- 
tudes? What are the Roman guards to her? Sup- 
posing she thought her Son had made a mistake, 
she would have been there just the same. It is the 
way of mothers to stand most near to the sons who 
have not come up to their hopes: 


“If I were damned of body and soul, 
I know whose prayers would make me whole— 
Mother o’ Mine.” 


37 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


Jesus looked at her, and then He said to the disciple 
whom He loved, “ Behold thy Mother.” ; 

I am always so thankful for that word, it is just 
what we want and expect. I have always longed 
/in the early days of the Gospel for some more 
tender phrase towards Mary to be spoken by 
her Son. Hers was such a hard life. I do not 
suppose she ever understood Him. Probably no 
mother ever quite understood her son. He was 
always moving further and further away, and she 
following but never quite catching up. Mothers 
often lose their sons. They draw away on other 
business, their Father’s or their own. 

No wonder the days when the Child was wholly 
dependent on the Mother’s care are infinitely 
precious; I know someone whose son gave his life 
in the War who treasures his childish rocking-horse 
as a priest might treasure his altar; and I know 
another mother in a mean street whose boy gathered 
all together and went into a far country: she keeps 
a light burning always at night in the little attic — 
where she was wont to see him asleep in his childish 
days. A mother’s lot is often pitiably hard. No 
wonder the childhood days of her son or her daughter 
are set in her heart like a jewel of countless worth. 
I wonder if Mary treasured in her new home a toy 
or a carpenter’s hammer that her Son once used. 

The Gospels make us eager, but they do not tell . 
us half that we want to know. They do not tell us 
anything like enough about the relationship between 
Jesus and His Mother. He must have been the 
perfect son, but you would hardly think it. Of 
course, those who wrote the Gospels were not writing 

38 


‘THY SON—THY MOTHER’ 


what we know as biographies. They were recording 
reminiscences, and that without any emotion. Such 
were the circumstances, Jesus said and did this 
or that—that was unforgettable. In these days we 
want to know so much about our Lord’s humanity. 
We do not want Him to wear a crown at the car- 
penter’s bench. All sorts of human questions come 
into our minds. How did He actually spend the 
day? What did He look like? Did He ever smile 
and laugh? Are we justified in thinking of Him, as 
I always do, as the most radiant person of His day 
in Palestine? ‘The Gospels do not tell us as much 
as we want. They are dealing with the heavenward 
side of the Son of God. They do not anticipate 
the questioning of our day. It is not about a 
mother’s son or a carpenter that they care to 
speak. 

The world of our day has gone out after the Son 
of Man—the Carpenter. Men and women are 
hard-pressed to know how to live as Christians 
within the world. A man with a halo is outside 
their beat. They want to know how their Ideal 
once lived. What was His relationship to those He 
loved and worked with? What sort of work was 
turned out from the carpenter’s bench? Were the 
yokes He is reported to have made as full of good 
craftsmanship as the carvings from Oberammergau? 
And how did He spend His evenings when the day’s 
work was done? Did He tell stories to His little 
family? He told them so beautifully later and 
surely that gift did not come to Him only when 
He wanted illustration for His sermons: and surely 
to His Mother He must have said so many tender 

oo 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


and beautiful things: we want to hear at least one 
of them, “ Rest awhile, Mother, while I tidy up.” 
“God loves you, Mother.” “I cannot bear your 
suffering, Mother, but one day all shall be clear 
to you.” : 

Religiously I am but a product of the thought that 
stirs my own generation, and there have been times 
when my poor faith has suffered from an unavailing 
search for some such passage of strong and tender 
love. It does not satisfy to tell me that He was 
“ obedient ” to His parents. And more than that, 
let me confess it in the presence of friends, what is 
told seems just a little hard. Even when you have 
allowed for translation it is rather stern, the result is 
something that is less than gentle. Those words 
of our dear Lord to His Mother at the wedding 
feast at Cana, ‘‘ What have 1 to do withthee? Mine 
hour is not yet come.” And again, “‘ Wist ye not 
that I must be about my Father’s business?” And 
she so anxious and tired in looking for Him Whom 
she had once carried in dark terror into Egypt after | 
the pains of the lowly stable-bed. And once more 
those words that must have brought sadness to a 
mother’s heart as she sends in someone to say that 
she and His brethren are waiting without and gets 
the answer, ‘“‘ Who is My Mother, and who are My 
brethren?” I think she must have cried when the 
words were reported to her. She was a human 
mother. 

I wish the writers of the Gospels had given us 
but one picture of intimacy between Mother and 
Son. They must have been so frequent. I wish 
that they had told us of a visit He had paid to His 

40 


“THY SON—THY MOTHER? 


home after His work had called Him away. 1 am 
sure He went there when He could: 


‘And yet I think at Golgotha 
As Jesus’ eyes were closed in death, 
They saw with love most passionate 
The village street of Nazareth.” 


He was the perfect Son, I am certain of that. 

He was always just lovely to women, so ahead of 
His own time that it baffled even His intimates. 
His attitude towards women has altered their whole 
position in the world. He makes not one single 
reference to them that is not respectful and tender. 
He told a deep secret to one woman who had not 
been a success. Mary and Martha were His inti- 
mates. He had a beautiful sympathy for women. 
As He went on that last journey to Jerusalem He 
found time not only to speak those ominous words 
about the city, but to pity its women folk who were 
soon to have babies. It is because this amazing 
sympathy and understanding for the hard lot of 
women is so plainly implied in the Gospels that I 
wish Matthew or Mark, Luke or John had sketched 
for our generation some little picture more lovely 
between our Lord and His Mother during the time 
that He moved about among men. But what we 
really want is found at the end on the Cross. 
~ I don’t know why Mary had to be beneath, why, 
in the name of Providence, she had not died before 
that dreadful Friday. Why, at least, was it not 
ordained that she should be absent from Jerusalem 
just then? The answer is a question. Would a 
mother desire to tend her son in his last agony? 

41 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 
Or would she rather He had died without her? Do 


you remember the women who went across to France 
that they might be with their men at the end? 
Anyhow, Mary was there, and just before the end He 
came right back to her. He looked at her and all 
His lovely humanity went out towards her. She 
must have a home and someone to tend her, and 
someone, too, who was His friend and with whom 
she could talk about Him, and so for His mother’s 
sake and for her future needs He makes, as it were, 
His last will and testament—‘ Behold thy Son.” 
And from that hour the disciple whom Jesus loved 
took her into his home. It is said, I know not 
with what truth, that they lived together for twelve 
years in Jerusalem, and that St. John refused to 
leave the city even for the purpose of preaching the 
Gospel as long as Mary was alive. 

There, then, at the end is the human touch we 
long for. It breaks through the reticence of those 
who record the story of the Cross. It is an unfor- 
gettable incident and infinitely precious to pilgrims 
like ourselves. It is the proof that He was the kind 
of son we have always known He was, “‘ Son, behold 
thy Mother.” He would never have asked someone 
to do what He had neglected to do Himself. She © 
was to have a home; with His dying breath He 
decreed it. The Father’s business did not prevent 
Him caring asason should. He was not inhuman. 

With us who care for causes, home so often comes 
last; there we return after our day of hectic good 
work. We are too tired to be of any service and the 
minutes of the last meeting must be written up. 
It could not be supposed from our conduct that 

42 


‘THY SON—THY MOTHER’ 


- there was any reality in our far-famed public utter- 
ances on fellowship, brotherhood and home life. 
Home is frankly an appendix to work. I hope my 
daughter may never be married to a man who is an 
unloving son albeit an earnest Church-worker. God 
help her if she is. She will lose her faith as well 
as the golden romance of her marriage day. 

One simple lesson I learn from the Third Word 
on the Cross, and it is that no business, no agonising 
for the welfare of mankind should ever make a man 
forget the claims of home. ‘‘ Though I speak with the 
tongues of men and of angels and have not love, Iam 
become as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. . . 
and though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, 
and though I give my body to be burned and have 
not love, it profiteth me nothing ”—and charity, that 
is love, begins at home. ‘These words might, indeed, 
be graven on the hearts of all men, but I would have 
them written in. gold on the hearts of those who 
spend their lives in the service of everyone except 
perhaps of those of their own household and of 
their own kith and kin. There are, alas, a hundred 
people who will join a society for ameliorating the 
lot of the unfortunate to one who will specialise 
on the tender care of those who are peculiarly his 
own. 

From the agony of the Cross, Jesus says much that 
is profound. This Third Word is within the 
understanding of all who have ears to hear. It is 
the part and test of a noble life that it does not 
neglect its nearest and its best. If your work for 
humanity is praised of men but never an echo of 
its beauty is heard behind your own front door, 

43 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


then do not give up your service any more than 
Jesus did, but for God’s sake let it fall like a blessing 
across the path where your own must walk. 


“¢ Almighty and loving Father, give us more power 
and grace to be tender and thoughtful to those 
whom Thou hast especially committed to our care. 
Give us understanding, wider sympathy and more 
patience thit we may make our home happier for 
those who live with us, that they may catch a 
glimpse of Thy love which was divinely human, 
through Jesus Christ our Lord.” 


CHAPTER. V 


“My Gop, My Gop, wuy wast THou rorsakEN Me?” 


“—-* 
a Fe 


Aen hs 
Te ae 


ee 





CHAPTER: V 


It has never been easy to accept the truth of the 
Christian revelation, and the difficulties of faith 
have always been up to the limit of human endur- 
ance. ‘[hose who teach otherwise are doing religion 
a grave disservice. If it is a God-given gift to 
possess a simple and an unquestioning faith, it is 
still more God-given by the addition of sympathy 
to have won a faith that has been fought for in 
dark places. It is a sufficiency of light that we 
really need, and for many of us there will never be 
on this side of the grave more than this. Few of 
us are overwhelmingly persuaded on any Damascus 
road. At the end of our search for the kind of 
God that we care to love and trust there will still 
be times of grave perplexity. 

If we are seeking a religion that will be doubt- 
proof, we are seeking a “ will-o’-the-wisp.” So 
many despair because they think there must be 
something wrong with them since from time to 
time they find it almost impossible to believe in a 
God that loves. I wish they knew that nearly all 
the lovers of our Lord have had their moments of 
dark despair. It is faith and not lack of it that 
asks questions. Thou who seek shall find a 
sufficiency of light. He cannot make Himself 
known to those who will not ask and seek and 
knock. ‘These alone are outside. 

47 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


“ When Jesus came to Golgotha 
They hanged Him on a tree; 
They drave great nails through hands and feet 
And made a Calvary. 
They crowned Him with a Crown of ‘Thorns, - 
Red were His wounds and deep, 
For those were crude and cruel days, 


And human flesh was cheap. 


“When Jesus came to Westminster, 

They simply past Him by, 

They did not touch a hair of Him, 
They simply let Him die. 

For men had grown more tender, 
And they would not give Him pain— 

They only just passed down the street 
And left Him in the rain. 


“Still Jesus cried, ‘ Forgive them, for they know not what they 
do,’ 
And still it rained the winter rain that drenched Him through 
and through. 
The crowd went home and left the street without a soul to see, 
And Jesus crouched against a wall and cried for Calvary.” 


The men who come to revile may stay to bless, 
but Calvary itself has no chance with those who 
will not question. Over against the present dis- 
couragement of what is called “ the religious situa- 
tion ” there is this at least to be glad about. ‘There 
are probably more people asking questions than ever 
before in the world’s history. 

We were foolish, of course, to think, as we once > 
did, that war was to bring a revival of real religion. 
It is a merciful thing that it did not, for if it needed 
a general massacre to fill churches, what an argument 
could be added to the already overstocked armoury 
of the militarists. War is a destructive curse.’ I 

48 


‘WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?’ 


wonder even now if we realise it. War is hell upon 
earth, and men and their women-folk who have 
been in hell cannot be expected to have had there 
much useful teaching about God. 

As a matter of fact, most of us have unlearned a 
lot about God. We have thrown away much that 
was true with much that was untrue. It is well for 
this generation to remember the words of Father 
Tyrrell, ““ When you are changing the wine from 
one chalice to the other, see that some of it is not 
spilt.” Men came back from the War, gallant and 
brave as before, but for the most part stripped of 
the little faith that once was theirs. And the 
Churches failed to give them what they lacked—and 
for one reason, they were and are inhuman. ‘The 
charge that can with most justice be brought 
against organised religion is not that the Churches 
are teaching what is untrue, or only partially true, 
but that they are teaching what is true in an 
altogether inhuman and unlovely way. 

Directly after the Armistice the vast majority of 
demobilised men and women dropped into their own 
church or chapel to see if they could “ stick” it. 
They have not been able to, and it is not altogether 
their fault. It is the professionalism of the officials 
who control Churches quite as much as clericalism 
that has brought about this unhappy state of affairs. 
And then five years passed—years of but poor 
achievement, until to-day this fact is haunting 
humanity, “ Without God there is no hope.” And 
thoughtful people turn wistfully to the Church— 
where else should they turn? And they see not 
one Church but a hundred warring sects, and those, 

D 49 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


so it would seem, busily engaged in building barriers, 
not against Anti-Christ, but against one another. 
And so the world goes on songless and unsanctified. 

If your faith is settled once and for all, and you 
have chosen its institutional expression, do for pity’s 
sake remember how the warring of the Churches 
bolts and bars the door against the people who 
desire to pass through to the sanctuary. Religi- 
ously, our generation, is rather like folk who have 
lost something for which they are unwilling to give 
up the search. Men cannot believe, and yet they 
cannot disbelieve. Around the festivals they throng 
the churches. ‘They will not leave the old memorials 
of their one-time faith. They cannot completely 
draw away from the places where they expect their 
questionings still to be answered. They cannot 
settle down to a world of belief, nor to a world 
from which belief is banished. ‘They still stand in 
the Garden where the Tomb lies. If only we could 
show them the living Lord and the marks of the 
Lord Jesus ! : 

But there is hope. At least men have faith 
enough to ask questions. And we who are within 
institutional religion are asking questions too. ‘The 
world has now passed out of clerical control. No 
longer will it accept an assertion merely because it 
is official and authoritative: but it will still seek 
the truth from the lips of any Christian, whether 
he owes allegiance to a Church or not, whose life is 
shot through with a beauty that he can connect 
with the love of Jesus Christ. Jesus has no rival. 
He is real, not because of any official status that 
Christendom has given Him, but simply because 

50 


‘WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?’ 


He is what He is. He who knows Him well enough 
to make Him known will never lack a following. 

And what are we to say to those who ask? Surely 
we may first tell them that we ourselves are often 
still out in the wilderness of doubt and uncertainty. 
That He Whom we call Lord and Master still 
often goes ahead where we cannot follow. If He 
always in the end seems to come back, yet He is 
often away a very long time. I think we might 
add that He, too, was once down in the depths—in 
agonies in the Garden of Gethsemane; in agonies 
on the Cross. For the comfort of the world that 
cry comes out of the depths, not one word of it 
will we ever attempt to explain away: ‘‘ My God, 
My God, why hast ‘Thou forsaken me? ” 

We have heard a good deal lately about creating 
a world fit for heroes. Spiritually that world already 
exists. It is not a world now that has much of a wel- 
come for cowards. As Professor Jacks says, “In the 
breast of every man there is both a coward and a 
hero,” and only the hero can live gladly in this 
present life. It is the interpretation of facts—not 
the facts themselves—that is the more important. 
Religion is that which develops the hero at the 
expense of the coward. Our Lord cried always for 
heroes, for men who would dare and adventure, He 
always suggested that it was only by going right 
down into the darkness that we could get through 
to the light. “‘ My God, My God, why hast Thou 
forsaken Me?” is followed by, “ Father, into Thy 
Hands I commend My Spirit.” 

There is a graphic picture drawn in the tenth 
chapter of St. Mark when the little group of timid, 

51 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


questioning disciples, with their Master at their 
head, is going up on that last fateful journey to 
Jerusalem. The end is near and the party is 
discouraged. ‘The darkness is gathering and sorrow 
has already fallen on the hearts of His friends. 
Their Master is moving before them a little ahead 
and they begin to wonder, and as they follow 
they begin to be afraid. He is striding on, and 
they would fain hold back. Yet they follow; and 
that is the point. ‘There is no one else to follow. 
This is a man’s ideal. If in your loud question- 
ing you have searched the wisdom of the world 
and never seen anything more Godlike than Jesus 
Christ, then follow—follow into the darkness and 
then to Calvary, and then to the Tomb. Follow 
with your mind as well as with your heart, and as 
you follow keep company with the Spirit Whom 
you pursue. I think your quest will not be in vain. | 
It has been said that if all the puzzled people would 
give up the attempt to explain Christ and devote 
the next year to following Him, at the end of that. 
time they would know more about Him than they 
had ever known before, and they would have put 
Christianity in a position to conquer the world. 

As we follow we may well be afraid, for we have 
to “ follow Him a long way and into many a dark 
place. We shall have to follow, not merely down 
the road that leads by the side of a quiet lane, but © 
into the Garden of Gethsemane and up to the 
Cross and beyond the Tomb to a victory over life.” 

Surely this is a hero’s pilgrimage, and it is likely 
that on the way there will be wrung from our lips 
the cry that Jesus was not ashamed to utter, “ My 

52 


‘WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?’ 


God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” 
That does not matter. What does matter is that 
He should see us afraid, amazed indeed, but follow- 
ing. ‘To those who are thus daring Christ will 
return. ‘A little while and ye shall not see Me, 
and again a little while and ye shall see Me, 
because I go to the Father.” 


**O human soul, as long as thou canst so 
Set up a mark of everlasting light, 
Above the howling senses’ ebb and flow, 
To cheer thee and to right thee if thou roam, 
Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night, 
Thou mak’st the heaven thou hop’st indeed thy home’ 


Jesus said, “ J am the Light of the World.” 


53 


ey, 
uF Bees 
‘ Aik 





CHAPTER VI 


“©] Turrst.”’ 


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tS tied ag] 
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P Pima 4 5 
rami Cig) 2) 





CHAPTER VI 


I parE not say much about physical pain. I 
understand so little about it. I have had my small 
share of suffering, and I am sure it has never done 
the part of me that counts any harm, but to see 
others in pain has been a dreadful trial to faith. I 
know nothing quite so intolerable as to stand by 
some loved one and to feel impotent to heal, either 
by prayer or by physic. I think that our prayers 
about the physical suffering of our friends are often 
ill-advised. It were better, I think, to spend more 
time praying not for an end of their pain, but for 
strength for them to bear it nobly. 

Jesus suffered. the agonies of physical pain, and 
more than that, He was not ashamed to call upon 
someone to alleviate the suffering. I always look 
on the doctor and the nurse with the Spirit of 
Christ in their hearts, as the most powerful repre- 
sentatives of Christ. I have seen His Spirit more 
plainly in the sick-room than anywhere else, and 
of all the noblest people on God’s earth, there are 
none more noble than those who bear their pain 
with consistent courage. 

On the Cross Jesus suffered, and He said so. “I 
thirst.” ‘‘ Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar, 
and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it 
upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth.” In those 

57 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


days it was a sign of weakness to confess to pain, 
and there are some to-day who deny its existence. 
But pain as a matter of actual fact is as real as sin. 
Since it hurts us horribly, Jesus was not likely to 
avoid a similar suffering. Only with Him it came 
last. It was the last thing to be thought about. 
When everything was done, the crucifiers forgiven, 
the poor criminal remembered, the Mother cared 
for, then the Son of Man said quietly—* I thirst.” 

The Saviour of the world was no ascetic, no 
dream-haunted absentee from paths that we poor 
folk must tread. He passed our way and found it 
rougher than we do. His lesson is, not how to die, 
but how to live that death may be but the gate 
that opens into a fuller life. Hunger and thirst 
had been His portion when the Son of Man had 
not where to lay His head. Only these things were 
not suffered to hold Him back from the Father’s 
business. He took them in His stride, but owned 
that they hurt. He never went round His trials, 
but through them, and there is all the difference in © 
the world between the two methods of meeting 
suffering. When He suffered and said that He 
suffered, He did not pray for miraculous deliverance, 
but out of the grandeur of His own soul, and with 
the assistance of a friend, He dealt with the lesser 
evil of pain that had come to Him as He pursued 
the Father’s way. 

I remember a sergeant in France, as noble a 
Christian as I ever met, stopping for a moment in 
the front line of trenches to have his hand bandaged 
before he went on again. ‘There was time for a 
joke while the bandage was being wound round his 

58 


SA THIRST? 


broken hand. 1 remember at the time, in the 
confused way in which we thought in France, seeing 
something of what pain meant to our Lord, in this 
picture of a muddy soldier. “It hurts like hell,” 
but it never once occurred to him that it should 
hold him back from his purpose. 

It is wonderful how often to those who have: 
eyes to see there are human scenes that reflect the 
diviner ones of the Day of Calvary. 

Let me give you another example that has often 
made me think of Christ. During the War the 
Oxford Settlement in Bethnal Green was naturally 
deserted by its workers, who were fighting in 
France. One man was left who had been there for 
years, an old Oxford blue and a man of brilliant 
intellect. He had given up his own fair prospects 
to be of humble service to his fellow-men in East 
London. He was considerably over fifty, and he 
found himself almost alone at the Settlement with 
the work that required over twenty men for its 
doing. He shouldered the whole burden and soon 
his eyesight gave in. The doctors told him that 
one eye must be taken out. With hardly a word to 
a soul he went to the hospital one Monday morning, 
had his eye out and was back again at work on 
Tuesday afternoon. Thus Christ still passes through 
the world. 

Pain is hateful. It is to be alleviated whenever 
possible, but it is not to be permitted to become 
the master of life. Man has been taught not in 
word, but in action, that suffering when it is met 
by faith and courage does bring to the soul a certain 
fellowship with the Divine life. There were four 

59 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


lines which Carlyle translated from Goethe and 
loved to repeat: 


‘* Who never ate his bread in sorrow, 
Who never spent the midnight hours 
Weeping and waiting for the morrow, 
He knows You not, ye Heavenly Powers.” 


The sufferer knows in the presence of the 
Crucified that there is an unseen world throbbing 
with sympathy. ‘The mystery of suffering remains. 
A disciple of Christ does not suffer less than others. 
But he is not left paralysed by despair. He can do 
something. In the fellowship of the crucified Cap- 
tain of his salvation he can make the world richer 
for all he has to endure. ‘There can be more of 
God in the world because of the pure faith and 
unwearying patience with which he challenges the 
darkness. | 


“ Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag, 
And smile, smile, smile,” 


is good Christianity as well as common sense. It 
suggests that suffering shall not be allowed to curtail 
the carrying through of the adventure for which 
the bag was packed. 

Our Lord’s entry through pain into death is the 
most glorious epic in history. He goes into it with 
the flags flying, and because of His triumph He has 
made death different from what it ever was before. 
Death had once worn the stamp of sin and of God’s 
anger. It had seemed like the entry of a criminal 


into the dock to receive a sentence untempered by 
60 


Ul PHIRS TF? 


charity and mercy—just, maybe, dreadfully, cruelly 
just. Here is One that walks through into glory, 
and the pain of His passage is but a setting of 
triumph. Service that stops at pain, or that pain 
can stop, is of little worth. Now no longer can we 
look on pain as the result of sin, or deride it as 
not existing. Now no longer can we suffer it to 
darken our homes, or its recital weary our friends, 
or its power to thwart the purpose of God. 

And one more thought: in His suffering Christ 
gave an opportunity to one who had possibly helped 
to nail Him to the Cross to provide the only touch 
of charity we see in these hours of man’s brutality. 
As once before He lifted the poor woman by the 
well from the meanness of her life by causing her to 
satisfy His thirst, so here He weaves into the Gospel 
story the tale of one rough soldier who knew how 
to answer the cry of a heart in pain. 

In Our Lord’s picture of the Day of Judgment 
one amazing fact stands out: those who are wel- 
comed are but the people who have done those 
“little nameless, unremembered acts of kindness 
and of love,”’ as Wordsworth calls them, “ that are 
the best portion of a good man’s life.” Jesus says 
these things are decisive. They reveal what is in 
the heart of man. ‘* Lord, when saw we Thee in 
hunger, or thirsty, and gave ‘Thee meat or drink? 
We do not remember it.” And the Judge seems to 
say, “‘ No, you wouldn’t. These were things done 
out of your heart, not acts of charity so much as 
the forgotten by-products of hearts that were on 
fire with love—inasmuch as ye have done it unto 


one of these ye have done it unto Me.” 
61 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


Wherever in the world to-day can be heard the 
pathos of that human cry, “I thirst,” there is 
Christ,—on the kerb-stone, in the office, or the 
home. That cry sounds loud from people who 
hunger the world over. How the Christ must 
long to see here one and here another taking up 
their bed of suffering and walking out towards the 
cry—not waiting for the angel to come down and 
trouble the pool. How He must long to see a few 
more of us step out of the crowd, even though 
companions think it foolish, and give what we can 
in answer to the cry of a suffering world, “I thirst.” 


CHAPTER VII 


“IT Is FINISHED.” 


Aa 





CHAPTER VII 


Ir is hard for us to know the intonation with 
which these words of the dying Christ were spoken. 
If they came as the sufferer’s sigh of relief, they 
must also have been the worker’s glad cry of achieve- 
ment. Everything had been done that could be. 
Man had been offered a sight of God as He really 
was. For those of us who believe that in seeing 
Jesus we see God, the Cross is not a coarse frame- 
work of blood-stained wood, but the most precious 
emblem of man’s dearest hopes. Set in the back- 
ground of Easter Day it is the great pledge which 
we so sorely need, that love is stronger than hate, 
grace than sin, life than death. 


“Though the cause of evil prosper 
Yet ’tis truth alone is strong, 
Though her portion be the scaffold 

And upon the throne be wrong— 
Yet that scaffold sways the future, 

And behind the dim Unknown 
Standeth God within the shadow, 

Keeping watch above His own.” 


God came the whole way to let us know that, 
and the Cross was the noblest and most glorious 
emblem of a rout that was turned into a victory. 

I cannot bear the ordinary Crucifix, especially 


those turned out by our so-called ecclesiastical art 
E 65 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


shops, and there is no picture of the Crucifixion that 
I care to look at save one in the Louvre, where the 
dear face is hidden in shadow. In Amiens Cathe- 
dral there is a very old carving which represents 
the Figure of Christ; He wears a robe and a royal 
diadem. His arms are extended as though to 
embrace the whole world, but no longer are the 
hands and feet nailed to the tree. Christ is reigning 
here and yet reigning from the Cross. It is this 
Christ from Whose lips I hear the victorious words, 
*¢ It is finished.” 

Mr. H. G. Wells says something like this in God, 
the Invisible K1ng. 


“The symbol of the Crucifixion, the droop- 
ing, pain-drenched Figure of Christ . . . these 
things just jar with our spirit. We little men 
may well fail and repent, but it is our faith 
that God does not fail us nor Himself. Our 
Crucifix, if you must have a Crucifix, would 
show God with a hand or foot already torn 
away from its peg, and with eyes not downcast, 
but resolute against the sky—a face without 
pain. Pain lost and forgotten in the surpassed 
glory of the struggle and the inflexible will to 
live and prevail. . 

ian Christianity which shows for its daily 
symbol Christ risen and trampling victoriously 
upon a broken cross would be far more in the 
spirit of our worship.” 


The Crucifix on which we so often gaze only tells 
us half of what has been done for us. It is an 


insufficient symbol of the Christian faith. ‘The task 
66 


‘IT IS FINISHED’ 


before those who would portray Christ is to show 
Him reigning because of the Cross. What was 
once the dark instrument of death that cast its 
shadow on the whole of Calvary now throws its 
glory over the whole earth to lighten the dark night 
of despair and sin. A Cross on which there is no 
Figure may be a truer reminder of what Christ 
did than a Crucifix that tells always of pain and 
death. 

While He is still on the Cross Christ says, “ It is 
finished.” What is finished? What does it mean 
actually to us that He said, “It is finished”? I 
have never thought that our Lord was referring to 
His own suffering. I have always thought the 
“It ” referred to something that was holding me. 
I could imagine a father saying the same to his son 
on the morning that, after a long term in prison, 
he was allowed once more to join himself to his 
fellow-men. ‘The boy is free now—free, if he so 
cares, to make good and to live once more in the 
company of free men. He could fall back into the 
old grooves, or in the new life he could be born 
again. ‘The way is not clear, but it is open. 

I have read many books on the Atonement, and 
yet I cannot tell you much about it. I only know 
as the surest thing in the world that because Christ 
suffered I can love God, and because He came down 
to my level I have the power to rise towards His. 
If you love Jesus you are glad that He chose the 
Cross. It is more like Him than anything else He 
ever did. You will acknowledge, too, that in your 
case it has been effective, though you will stumble 
when you try to lat the how and why. The 

7 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


whole question that the Cross asks and answers is 
simply this: Will a man take Jesus at His word 
and commit himself to God? Will he hazard that 
the values of God are what Jesus said they were? 
These values are seen on the Cross. 

Our Master taught that he who would be in the 
Kingdom of God must be the servant of all, and 
that although goodness, beauty, truth and humility 
can be crucified, they must inevitably rise again. It 
is a matter for us of experiment rather than argu- 
ment. The man who will venture not half-way 
but the whole in daring to accept the new values 
of God will know that he was justified in his 
adventure. 

Jesus said all sorts of lovely things would happen 
to those who would end the old and begin the 
new. ‘The son would be home again and the 
father would cry, “‘ He was lost and is found. Let 
us be merry.” ‘The son is now more God’s than 
ever, just as a sheep that had been lost would be — 
of greater value than one that had never strayed 
from home. 

I have been over the world and have spent 
much time in watching people pursue happiness | 
which all the while was by their side, or rather in 
their hearts for the bringing out. I have never 
met any as happy as those who have set out to prove 
that when God promised power to all who would _ 
be born again into the spirit of service, He said 
what He was perfectly able to carry out and by 
some grace indefinable that flows like a blessing 
from Calvary. 


All this I hear as Jesus says from the Cross, 
68 


‘Il IS FINISHED’ 


“Tt is finished.” ‘Those words seem to imply, 
** And now it is up to you to begin. Those chains 
that hold you, test them, they cannot hold you 
any longer. That restless soul of yours that is 
always wanting you know not what—it was made 
for me. My peace I give unto you—if only you 
will take it.” “It is finished” is the worker’s cry 
of achievement which will be mocked at always 
by those who are unwilling to test its truth. Our 
moral difficulties come long before our intellectual 
ones. ‘They are much the harder of the two. It 
is harder to forget self than to believe in miracles or 
repeat a Creed. Just before the darkness of death 
settles down, Christ tells us that He has set at 
liberty those that are bound and opened the road 
to the adventurous and unafraid. 

There is no prospect ahead of us more glorious 
than the sense of comradeship with a great leader 
in a great crusade for the welfare of mankind. 
That is Christ’s offer, and because He has made 
it, here one and here another join themselves to 
His company and find the road hard indeed, but 
infinitely worth while. 

In The Pilgrim’s Progress the story of the Atone- 
ment is well translated: “‘ By what they say I 
perceive that he had been a great Warrior and had 
fought with and slain him that had the power of 
death, but not without great danger to himself, 
which made me love him the more.” 


. 


an 





CHAPTER VIII 


“ FaTHer, INTO Tuy HANDS I commenD My spirit.” 





CHAPTER VIII 


Turse words, like the fourth saying from the ' 
Cross, are a quotation from the Psalms. Jewish 
children used them in their evening prayers. They 
were saying them, no doubt, on the evening of the 
Crucifixion. While the smoke of the evening 
sacrifice goes up Jesus says the same words in His 
last evening prayer. All through the three hours 
of His agony He is in spirit doing what His enemies 
dared Him. He is coming down from the Cross 
to be near to His own. 

In the life of our Lord there is a strange blending 
of the lowly and the majestic. At His birth He 
was laid in a manger, while out on the pastures of 
Bethlehem angels sang His praises. Long after- 
ward He was asleep in a boat and so overcome with 
fatigue that He had to be wakened to realise His 
danger, but immediately He rebuked the winds and 
the waves and there was a great calm. When He 
saw the grief of Mary and Martha He wept good 
human tears before He raised their brother to life 
again. Here in His last moments He is saying the 
simple prayer of a child, yet He was prefacing it 
with the word that lifted’ it to a plane of glory. 
“ Father,” He said, “into Thy hands I commend 
My spirit.” 

73 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


Is it not strange that though I have seen many 
die in war and in peace I have never yet heard a 
man or a woman with their last prayer utter the 
word “Father”? Jesus called God “ Father” 
in the sunny days of the Galilean life, and He 
called Him ‘‘ Father” at the beginning and end 
of His agony. Since Jesus lived God is to man 
a nearer and a lovelier Being. Father—that is 
the word that comes out of the darkness of 
Calvary. 

I have sadly failed in preaching Christ if I have 
not allowed you to see that the glad news of to-day is 
about God. ‘The Cross is not an isolated fact in 
history to weep about, and to be thought about in 
barren admiration. It is the revelation of what 
God is and is like. It is a living and actual presen- 
tation of the character of God or it is very little 
else. 

That which holds many men to-day away from 
God is that they have been too often the victims of 
a veritable caricature of God—which, alas! our 
present Prayer-Book in certain places does a good 
deal to encourage. 

The war did not produce this false God—it 
brought Him into the open. Mr. Britling said, 
‘Our sons have shown us God,” and it is true in 
the sense that it is unthinkable that God should be 
less lovable than those who without a murmur laid. 
down their lives for their brethren. 

But all the while and down the ages against our 
false conception of God has stood the Cross of 
Calvary, and on it has hung Jesus Christ, and He 
has cried “ Father ” until you would think there is 

74 


‘FATHER, INTO THY HANDS’ 


not a soul who had not heard, and yet even nominal 
Christians still have no idea of linking the name 
of God with the blessed name Father. We need so 
much to think religion through again in terms of 
that word and, still more, we Christians need to act 
as if it were true. 

Jesus taught the Fatherhood of God; yes, but 
He wasn’t always preaching it—He was living it 
out. 

Christianity began not with an argument made, 
but an act done and a deed accomplished. There 
was a time in the ministry of Jesus when He stood 
silent before Pilate. The hour of speech was over 
—it remained to do. 

Carlyle’s accusation against civilisation that it 
had run to seed in talking is still true. There are a 
hundred noble orations to one noble act. All this 
has no application to the birth of Christianity. 
Something worth talking about was furnished 
before the talking began. 

In the Cross I glory because of one word spoken 
at the beginning and one word at the end which is 
commended to me because of the life that lived 
it out. If we could live out that belief in God we 
could bring in the Kingdom. It is a hard task and 
a difficult truth to believe, but I vow I can try and 
I can believe enough to test it, because to-day once 
again I have seen the loveliest life that was ever 
presented going down into death and with these 
brave words, “‘ Father, into Thy hands I commend 
My spirit.” 

There is only one way in which the truth or falsity 
of any creed can be tested, and that is by trying 

75 


TWO DAYS BEFORE 


whether we can live up to it and seeing what 
happens. 


‘Tho’ love repine and reason chafe, 
There came a voice without reply— 
Tis man’s perdition to be safe 


When for the Truth he ought to die.” 


I would love it if any who read these simple 
words could go on their way with new courage and 
new hope, and the word “Father* ringing in 
their ears. 

Remember this old world spiritually is a world 
fit only for heroes, that is, for men and women who 
will dare to go through the shadows until the day 
breaks. 

It is no world for those who will allow the coward 
within them to triumph over the hero. You cannot. 
preserve a living faith with any slogan of “ Safety 
first.” 

There is an old Jewish legend which tells that 
Satan was once asked what it was he missed most 
since he had fallen from his high estate in heaven. 
“‘T miss most of all,’ said he, ‘‘ the trumpets that 
are sounded every morning.” I know just what 
that means. 

The one thing we need to learn, if life is to be 
glorious and Christlike, is the sound ‘of the trumpets 
in the morning, calling us to let the hero within us — 
get the better of the coward. 

There is nothing in life so worth while as to ride 
out in happy valiancy with Christ for God and love’s 
sake, blundering in where angels fear to tread, 
by the love of Christ making glad the heart of man 

76 


‘FATHER, INTO THY HANDS’ 


on his pilgrimage, binding up hearts that are broken, 
and standing by those who are halting lest they 
may need the hand stretched out to lead them 
to the Kingdom. 

Not preaching but practice is what is wanted. 
The trumpets sound in the morning not for preach- 
ing but for practising and for testing the prayer of 
the night and the hour before. 

“Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” 


77 


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